1. Field
The present disclosure is generally related to billing for and outputting documents. More specifically, the present disclosure is related to automatically outputting documents at the highest billable tier allowed based on a customer's credentials.
2. Description of Related Art
One barrier to the adoption of color document output within offices is the inability to conveniently control and/or limit color usage by users (e.g., for cost purposes). In some instances, in order to provide options with regard to printing documents in color, users are being provided with multiple color billing options. An example of such an option is the introduction of pricing and output options based on a tiered billing concept, such as disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/580,686 entitled “System and Method for Determining a Billing Structure for Documents Based on Color Coverage of Marked Color Pixels,” filed Oct. 16, 2009, hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Even with such billing and pricing options, some enterprise and cost conscious customers would like to restrict usage of color output and printing within their environments. In some systems or products, feature access control is provided whereby certain features (such as use of color) are enabled (or disabled) based on user's credential(s). For example, only specific users may be authorized for (or limited from) color printing. However, such limitations generally only work with 2-tier billing models, i.e., a user is merely limited to printing in black & white or color. Therefore billing models with three or more tiers that offer several levels of color impressions (e.g., black and white, everyday color, expressive color) are underutilized.
Also, some methods attempt control color usage to users or customers by utilizing a monochrome-only print driver. However, downloading and installing a print driver that supports color can circumvent this (i.e., the customer can easily bypass color restrictions by loading a different driver that supports color). Therefore, some systems have the controller provide color access control. However, in many instances, controller decisions may delete a user's print job if his/her job doesn't meet the required credential(s). For example, after a user's job is submitted, the user's credentials may be analyzed for authorization of color usage. If the user is authorized to use color, the job would be printed. If not, the job would be deleted.
Other attempts to control printing include analyzing the sensitivity of data to be processed by a device, such as described in U.S. Patent Application Publication 2006/0101523 to Talbert entitled “Automatic Custom Interface Based Upon the Security Level of a Document, published May 11, 2006 and assigned to Xerox Corporation, as well as offering a user pricing options per page (or per document), such as described in U.S. Patent Application Publication 2010/0005038 to Nagarajan et al. entitled “System and Method for Personalized Price per Print/Copy,” published Jan. 7, 2010 and assigned to Xerox Corporation, both of which are also incorporated by reference in their entirety. However, such systems typically require user input and/or decisions with regard to output.
Accordingly, an improved system and a method for determining a user's color usage limits (or credentials) with a tiered billing process and automatically outputting documents according to a user's credentials is desirable.